Sunday, May 17, 2009
you can't think of nothing
on a big eric rohmer kick at the moment. between l'amour d'apres-midi and la collectionneuse i'm a confirmed fan. his remaining four moral tales have been pushed to the top of my netflix. below are the screen captures from the interstitials/credit and title cards of la collectionneuse, showing rohmer enjoying the availability of color in his first non-black and white film. one other interesting tidbit, every shot in the film was done in one take (the shooting ratio was a remarkable 1.5:1). even more incredible given nestor almendros' beautiful cinematography on 16mm (a format mandated by rohmer to keep costs down). makes you think about all that film stock going to waste out there...
Friday, May 15, 2009
this is water
time has posted the "ten best commencement speeches" aggregating some legendary words of wisdom in one place
1) Steve Jobs - really practical, if pretty macabre - "Stay hungry, Stay foolish"
2) Conan O'Brien - i've posted this before, it's a delight - "Fall down, make a mess, break something occasionally"
3) Simon Baker - i'd never read this before, so brilliant - three favorites because it's new to me: "Being dumb is not the worst thing in the world, but letting your clothes shout it out loud depresses the neighbors and embarrasses your parents. " / "It's good for the soul to hear yourself as others hear you, and next time maybe, just maybe, you will not talk so much, so loudly, so brilliantly, so charmingly, so utterly shamefully foolishly." / "Sleep in the nude."
4) Winston Churchill - time description nails it, this is a battle cry - "You cannot tell from appearances how things will go."
5) George Marshall - dry stuff indeed. not particularly quotable but - "An essential part of any successful action on the part of the United States is an understanding on the part of the people of America of the character of the problem and the remedies to be applied."
6) JFK - this is like a state of the union speech - "the peace is not secure because the freedom is incomplete."
7) Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) -brimming with lemon lyman charm, good old "whitty" drops some pleasant knowledge and a billy madison reference - "You've got to want to do whatever you want to do more than you want to be whatever you want to be"
8) Barbara Kingsolver - hadn't read this before either and really loved it - "Wisdom is like frequent-flyer miles and scar tissue; if it does accumulate, that happens by accident while you’re trying to do something else."
9) Stephen Colbert - mostly just one liners, albeit great ones - "There are so many challenges facing this next generation, and as they said earlier, you are up for these challenges. And I agree, except that I don't think you are. I don't know if you're tough enough to handle this. You are the most coddled generation in history. I belong to the last generation that did not have to be in a car seat. You had to be in car seats. I did not have to wear a helmet when I rode my bike. You do. You have to wear helmets when you go swimming, right? In case you bump your head against the side of the pool. Oh, by the way, I should have said, my speech today may contain some peanut products."
and
10) of course, DFW. i could post the whole address. should. buy it amazon. it works in that suspect one line per page format. if i had any semblance of daily discipline i'd read it every morning. hard to extract but here goes -
"A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. Here's one example of the utter wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it's so socially repulsive, but it's pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default-setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: There is no experience you've had that you were not at the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real -- you get the idea. But please don't worry that I'm getting ready to preach to you about compassion or other-directedness or the so-called "virtues." This is not a matter of virtue -- it's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self."
1) Steve Jobs - really practical, if pretty macabre - "Stay hungry, Stay foolish"
2) Conan O'Brien - i've posted this before, it's a delight - "Fall down, make a mess, break something occasionally"
3) Simon Baker - i'd never read this before, so brilliant - three favorites because it's new to me: "Being dumb is not the worst thing in the world, but letting your clothes shout it out loud depresses the neighbors and embarrasses your parents. " / "It's good for the soul to hear yourself as others hear you, and next time maybe, just maybe, you will not talk so much, so loudly, so brilliantly, so charmingly, so utterly shamefully foolishly." / "Sleep in the nude."
4) Winston Churchill - time description nails it, this is a battle cry - "You cannot tell from appearances how things will go."
5) George Marshall - dry stuff indeed. not particularly quotable but - "An essential part of any successful action on the part of the United States is an understanding on the part of the people of America of the character of the problem and the remedies to be applied."
6) JFK - this is like a state of the union speech - "the peace is not secure because the freedom is incomplete."
7) Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) -brimming with lemon lyman charm, good old "whitty" drops some pleasant knowledge and a billy madison reference - "You've got to want to do whatever you want to do more than you want to be whatever you want to be"
8) Barbara Kingsolver - hadn't read this before either and really loved it - "Wisdom is like frequent-flyer miles and scar tissue; if it does accumulate, that happens by accident while you’re trying to do something else."
9) Stephen Colbert - mostly just one liners, albeit great ones - "There are so many challenges facing this next generation, and as they said earlier, you are up for these challenges. And I agree, except that I don't think you are. I don't know if you're tough enough to handle this. You are the most coddled generation in history. I belong to the last generation that did not have to be in a car seat. You had to be in car seats. I did not have to wear a helmet when I rode my bike. You do. You have to wear helmets when you go swimming, right? In case you bump your head against the side of the pool. Oh, by the way, I should have said, my speech today may contain some peanut products."
and
10) of course, DFW. i could post the whole address. should. buy it amazon. it works in that suspect one line per page format. if i had any semblance of daily discipline i'd read it every morning. hard to extract but here goes -
"A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. Here's one example of the utter wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it's so socially repulsive, but it's pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default-setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: There is no experience you've had that you were not at the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real -- you get the idea. But please don't worry that I'm getting ready to preach to you about compassion or other-directedness or the so-called "virtues." This is not a matter of virtue -- it's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self."
Thursday, May 14, 2009
is this better than what we're already working on?
the last song/post reminds me of this old classic now that i think of it. this version remains the best i've heard. too bad pj never recaptured the energy from their early post-mookie blaylock days. pretty dull on the old proscenium.
we stuck around cause nobody wanted to die
cap tipped off here we go way back when. video isn't much to see but it's a blast to listen to. luke temple...smart dude. waiting on a live video for everything's big. credit to dbs for g-reader share.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
take a stress pill and think things over
it's been two days and i'm still reeling from seeing a 70mm print of 2001: a space odyssey on sunday night. so much so that i sat through the flat out terrible sequel 2010 and read the synopses of 2061 and 3001, the third and fourth installments of arthur c. clarke's space odyssey series, last night to satisfy my craving for more. such attempts only served to further drive home how incredible kubrick's film it. i won't go into the how's and why's of the film's awesomeness. as i've learned in the last 48 hours through my own frenetic online research, there's more than enough analysis and written appreciation. i'd seen it once before on dvd (might even have been vhs it was so long ago) and i feel like i saw an entirely different film on the big screen. seek it out. it's worth it. because every frame of the film is meticulously composed and captivatingly deliberate i may be going overboard with these screen captures. who cares. i can not get enough.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Friday, May 1, 2009
if you have a good acid trip you conclude that
in this li'l interview devendra drops countless gems from describing the "freak folk" scene with different bands comprising various elements of a beachside paradise (antony is the palm tree with hanging suns instead of coconuts) to explaining how drawings become songs and vice versa. it's so damn earnest and because it's dev you can't help but dig it. oh he also suggests he might stop putting out albums. this was shot almost three years ago.
pics from this show to come.
pics from this show to come.
no matter where it went, no matter who listened
i've revisited this song "hatari" pretty regularly since hearing it amidst tune-yards sxsw buzz a few months back. really the thing to do with this song is just listen to it and try to imagine how it's played and by whom. the chances of predicting the actual artist, merill garbus, are just about nil. rhythmically and melodically this song continues to blow me away and the fact it was recorded on free/gifted software entirely by garbus (deliberately so it would all be hers) is really admirable, even if it absolutely sounds like it was recorded on a dictaphone. it's part of the charm and, as it turns out, selling her diy cassette tapes has resulted in turning a tidy profit. the video below is a stripped down version of the track but it's still captivating.
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